Across An Island
by MrsWalterBlythe
Summary: NOTE: Used to be called "Of Avonlea and the Glen". A series of letters that Anne Blythe and Diana Barry Wright exchange during the blank years of the Great War, comforting and warming eachother's hearts through sorrow and through joy. Please review
1. The Beginning

_Lone Willow Farm_

_Avonlea_

_P.E.I._

_August 3, 1914_

_Dear Anne, _

_Oh, isn't it all so horrid? Why, oh, Why, Anne? Why?! I feel like stomping all the way down to the Echo Lodge valley with the echoes of old and screaming, WHY!_

_Oh, Anne, I wish you were here. Since Ma went I have really been beside myself. And now both my dear Fred and Jack are going. Immediately, they say. To enlist. I am so worried. Everybody says that it will be over in a few months, but Fred – original one, of course – he says that it is hardly possible. And Little Fred already a father of two and poor Clara expecting again! And Jack so young . . . _

_Davy Junior plans to go . . . and Millie Keith has been over and we have done some moping around together. She really is a dear, you know. At least I know I'm not a fool all alone. Are you, at least, more sensible than us? Minnie May says we are terribly unreasonable – and she having no sons herself! I suppose she knew this all was going to happen and did it purposefully. I'm sorry, Anne, but sometimes I wish you weren't so quick in saving her from the croup them thirty-some years ago. She is becoming a sort of second Rachel Lynde. _

_That's a terrible wicked thing for me to say – of both Minnie May, who is a dear, and poor Mrs Rachel, God bless her dear od soul, but I can take it into my confidence that you will not tell. Oh, you wouldn't, would you Anne? _

_That's all I have the time and heart and soul to write, but please do write me a lovely juicy epistle clearly stating, "For Gosh' sake, Diana, pull yourself together!". In the meantime, I will remain_

_The bosom friend who misses you just terrible,_

_YOUR DIANA_

_P.S. My love to Gilbert and your flock, from their "Aunty" _

_DI_

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_Ingleside _

_Glen St Mary_

_P.E.I._

_August 11, 1914_

_Diana dearest,_

_Do you think this is easy on anyone? Jem's going "immediately". Jerry Meredith is signing up too, and Nan is petrified! Thank "Gosh" that Walter is not strong enough yet…typhoid, remember. _

_For Gosh' sake, Diana, pull yourself together! There! - was that clear enough for your liking? Well, Di, I never thought I'd hear you become such a pessimist. On the same line as Minnie May being the next Mrs Rachel, tell me, no shirking, are you turning into an Eliza __Andrews? I see - I can feel it in my bones you shan't remember her. No matter. Dearest, be strong. At least your Little Fred has had his share of life, is it not good that he has been able to experience family life? He is settled down, and – if anything were to – to happen to him, think of it as this. Three children and a wife will have happy memories of him and Clara will work for him and him alone for the rest. How are little Josephine and George? Diana, oh, how the years have whizzed past. Were we not a day ago having our innocent little larks about Willowmere, and Violet's Vale? Do you remember all those fairyland days of yore? _

_Being a grandmother must be an experience. How perfectly splendid that your mother left old Orchard Slope to Fred Junior! Alright - I am going to tell you now that the rest of the Fred's mentioned in _my_ letters will be _Little _Fred, unless I otherwise specify. What a bore to keep writing "Junior"'s and "Little"'s all over the place! Now, - using my most splendidly schoolmarm-ish tone – Diana Wright, if you are taking offense this minute, you could have thought about this thirty years ago. _

_Alas, 'tis late, my friend, and a fuller update of goings-on shall soon follow, but for now, my head is aching and I am experiencing all the aches and pains a woman of eight and forty, of course, does. And so – goodnight._

_Yours, and still _

_THAT HOMELY SORT OF GIRL WITH THE FIERY TEMPER,_

_ANNE SHIRLEY BLYTHE_

A/N: This chapter might be a bit weird, but it is basically to introduce it. The following chapters, I think, will be more interesting. Please review, because it really does help!


	2. So long, farewell

_Lone Willow Farm _

_Avonlea_

_P.E.I._

_August 16, 1914_

_Anne,_

_Well, how do, Mrs Blythe? I am glad to say you find me in a cheerier mood today, though I have been said by Fred to be starting to resign to being wonderfully cynical._

_Today – ah! that word can mean so much! – there was a good old gathering at Bright River to send our boys off. Not just Fred and Jack and Davy Junior, but "Spurge" MacPherson – Josie's lad!– the five Sloane lads – they breed like anything, Anne – and even wee Ollie Carter, who's only fourteen, Anne, and I don't know how he passed through. There were so many young women seeing their especial boys off, it was _almost_ heartbreaking – but I was determined to be brave, darling. Little Fred – for Little he is and Little he shall stay – had Clara, of course. She even had little Josephine with her, and Georgie held my hand. There is a wonderful sensation, Anne, when your grandchild clasps your hand in their little white one._

"_Nana" George has the most wonderful talent for pet names, "Is Dad gunna go and pot some old Huns?" I tell you I was shocked, though I suppose such language is easy to pick up nowadays. I have a fear that old Josie heard, for I heard her speaking to Moody._

"_You _do_ wonder where those Wright young'uns get their tone from," just as if it were perfectly _obvious _where they got it from. Oh, dear, Anne. But Fred and Jack were sent off with a smile, to say the least._

_Anne Cordelia has developed a new name "Cordy". I am terribly afraid of her philandering with those Sloanes too much…a "Pete" has been mentioned by her far too often. Well, they are all off, including Pete Sloane, and all I have to worry me now is "philandering by pen", to quote Minnie May. She is an expert on all her daughters' love affairs, and wherever she goes she tells and retells them, until, I assure you, the whole of Avonlea knows them off by heart. I would not like to be in my nieces' positions, believe _me.

_Tell me, does this letter prove to you the absolute un-pessimism of your optomistic – _

_DIANA WRIGHT?_

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_Ingleside_

_Glen St Mary_

_P.E.I._

_August 30, 1914_

_My optimistic Diana,_

_Doesn't it just give you a thrill down to your fingertips to have the opportunity to call someone "My" and sign off with "Your"? It is such a poetic thing to do. _

_Well, yours are off. Mine are of, too. Jem – Jerry – a few others. I suppose we shall all see them before they really go off to fight. But to Valcartier they go and must go. This is the last time I shall see "Little" Jem. When he comes back he will be Lieutenant James Blythe, never to be my Little Jem of the House of Dreams again. Nan is holding her own well. She and Di are off to college along with Faith Meredith and Walter – they hope to take the two year course and be done with it so they can volunteer to be useful somewhere or other. Shirley will be off, too, soon, to Queen's. _

_A household that one month ago held ten jolly inhabitants in one week will hold but five sober beings. Gil and I, Rilla and Miss Oliver, and Susan are left. Sometime, Diana, I will have to tell you of Dog Monday's Vigil, but that is not for now. _

_No, tonight, Di, it is the night for thrilling in the jubilant hymns of the world, that have been given to us for the prophesying of years to come, to let go of days of yore. We shall not see what is not to be seen; 'tis death, not life, ahead._

_Now I have had my little romantic spell; 'tis time for dreamland, my friend. "Sing before eating, cry before sleeping"; all depends on the time of the day I lift my pen; this is a letter for tears, and who knows but the one who lifts her pen before sleeping is – _

_YOUR EQUALLY CYNICAL_

_ANNE-WITH-AN-E_

_P.S. Ah – thrills – there goes the "Your"._

_A.B._

_P.S.2 Cynicism. Do you remember old Katherine (I _will_ spell it with a "K") Brooke and how she was so frightened of dropping Little Fred? __- he was such a wee thing!_

_A.B._

A/N: I know, again maybe strange...but better than the last, right?!

Sorry the letters are so short, they look so much longer in Microsoft Word!


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